


In Memoriam

by Veail



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: mentions of death from a long time ago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 15:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15974894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veail/pseuds/Veail
Summary: Written for the deviantart group TMNT-allstories drabble challenge Gravestone.Burying a body when you're a mutant is fraught with danger. Not least of all is what happens when the burial site becomes a building site.





	In Memoriam

A combination of the dark and the unfamiliar ground made them cautious. They skirted the main area, now cleared and flattened, keeping instead to the perimeter, where the ground was loose and rocky. Moonlight refracted off the metal planes of digging equipment, abandoned where they had been stopped at the end of the shift.

Donatello shared a glance with him and Leo knew they were both thinking the same thing. Finding any signs in this junk pile was going to be next to impossible.

"Split up," Leo ordered in a low tone. "Look at the trees. There's a carved marker but it will have weathered now and it may be higher than before."

Donnie nodded to confirm. "The tree will have grown up as well as out. Any marker written at knee height could very well now be chest to us."

"You got it, Mikey?"

"Aye, Aye, C'pn." Mikey saluted before disappearing soundlessly into the dark.

Once they were sure he was safely away Donnie looked at Leo and smiled, a small motion with little happiness driving it. "Good luck." he said, before melting off himself in the opposite direction.

Leo snorted and shouldered his shovel a little more securely on his back before moving to the nearest tree.

...

It was only right that it was Leo who found it.

A small heart, carved with the dull blade of a knife Sensei had found not long after they mutated. Within it, initials. 'HY 4 TS'. Leo's hand reached out to touch the outline gently, knowing well how much was written between the lines.

It was a beautiful spot; greenbelt land within walking distance of their lair. They had been here often over the years to visit, but the site had never looked like this before. 

He sent a quick text to his brothers and waited. They arrived within seconds. Without prompting Leo reached out his left hand, his right one still touching the carving. They linked hands, Michelangelo reaching out to complete the circuit by placing his hand on the bark.

Whole again.

A single, solitary minute ticked its way into the past.

Then Leo heaved a shaky sigh, shrugged his shovel from his shoulder and set the blade to the ground. "I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice thick, not even sure what he was apologising for. There were too many thoughts in his head, vying for attention. Too many 'what ifs'.  


They dug.

....

It was only a few days ago but already it seemed a world away. A normal breakfast, like thousands of others that had come before it. His brothers cracking jokes about the toaster. Donatello reading the New York Times. But then Leo had turned, tea in hand and smile on his face, and caught sight of the headline emblazoned across the page facing him.

SAKI ENTERPRISES TO BUILD TWO HUNDRED HOMES ON GREENBELT LAND.

And their world had changed.

...

It didn't take a genius to understand why building work occuring on the ground where a mutant body was buried was a bad idea. The decision to exhume had not been taken lightly but the actual act itself didn't take long. Within the hour they had switched from deep, punching shovels, to gentle probing. Donatello was the first to make contact and he held up a hand. They stopped immediately as he knelt down and brushed the loose soil to the side to reveal a swathe of brightly coloured moulded plastic. His hands shook but no one mentioned it.

Leo bent to help him and between them they soon found the corners and could see they were looking at a stacking box. They scooped out the soil from the sides until they were able to grasp a side each and heft. It released from the ground reluctantly, a slow, sickening slide in the predawn calm.

...

"I always figured it'd be bigger," Mikey mused, as they knelt around the stacking box.  


Leo didn't reply. Before anyone could even think to stop him he reached out and grasped the latch on the corner, flipping it up.

The same to the other corner and he was lifting the lid. He was vaguely aware of Mikey yelping in the background, "Dude!" but it was far away and unimportant. Unlike the contents of the box.

A ratty folded blanket, faded red and threadbare. A few pieces of paper with childish scrawls on them and a teddy bear.

He stared for a while in silence.

Donatello's hand on his arm broke his meditation in the end and he looked up to see his brothers' outlines in the predawn light.

"Let's take his memory home."

Leo could only nod. His mind too full. Some part of him had wanted to lay eyes on the physicality of it all, his long missing and much missed brother in the flesh. Some twisted form of closure perhaps. He was the only one of the three of them who bore any memories of Raphael and those were faded and partial. Flash bulb moments. Leo had found that he had no memories of what Raphael looked like anymore. Just feelings and senses.

...

They were always meant to be four. Sensei had never hidden that fact from them. They had grown up with the memory of Raphael wrapped around them until it had almost seemed as if he was still there, just... in another room or on a trip.

Raphael had died when they were three and Leonardo had felt incomplete ever since.  


He had hoped this night, for all its necessity, could help to heal that emptiness inside. But, sitting there at the kitchen table, Raphael's childish drawings spread out around him, he only felt the twisting pain inside flare stronger.

There were no photographs. Splinter, for obvious reasons, could not risk leaving a picture of him around where it could be found. And at that point in their lives they hadn't even owned a camera. There was no body for the same reasons, although Splinter had never had the heart to tell them this. Raphael's body had been cremated and his ashes scattered in the Hudson, he told them later on.

So there was nothing left.

Donatello's arms surrounded him suddenly and Leo let himself lean into the contact. Mikey, on his other side, pulled one of the pictures free from the rest. "Aw, look at you, Leo." He tilted the image so Leo could see.

It was nothing special. And indescribably precious. Just two green squiggly balls, one with blue mixed in and one with red, holding stick hands.

It was Raphael.

And somehow, it was enough.


End file.
